“Yes,” Bennis said. “I’m coming. Just a minute. I’ll be right there.”
Paul Hazzard, Bennis thought.
Paul Hazzard with Hannah Krekorian.
Just wait until Gregor Demarkian hears about this.
Part One
Hearts and Flowers…
One
1
GREGOR DEMARKIAN HAD BEEN living on Cavanaugh Street for something over two years, and in that time he had developed a routine for what he thought of as his “normal” days. “Normal” days were days when he was not involved in any extracurricular murder case, or traveling, or being hauled off from one place to another to “consult” with people Father Tibor Kasparian thought needed his advice. “Normal” days were normal in spite of the fact that there were fewer of them than of the other kind. It was odd how that worked. Gregor had sworn at enough alarm clocks in his time to believe that he ought to have loosened up and done away with schedules completely, now that he was retired. Instead, he might as well have been back in Virginia, coming in every morning to the Department of Behavioral Sciences. That was what Gregor Demarkian had done his last ten years with the FBI. First he had organized and then he had run the Department of Behavioral Sciences, which had the job of conducting federal searches for interstate serial killers. During the decade he spent in the FBI before that, he had done all sorts of things, none of which he would now describe as “normal.” It was enough to make him wonder about people—and even about himself. His schedule was as rigid now as it had been when he’d held a mandatory staff meeting every Monday through Friday at eight A.M.
These days, what Gregor held every Monday through Saturday at seven A.M. was breakfast at the Ararat Restaurant. He would have held it there on Sunday too, but the Ararat wasn’t open then. The Melajians, who owned it, went to church on Sunday mornings. Some of the people Gregor usually met for breakfast went to church on Sunday mornings too. Father Tibor Kasparian had to, or there would be no liturgy for the rest of Cavanaugh Street to attend. Old George Tekemanian hadn’t missed a Sunday since the day he was married. He had been twenty-three then and was well over eighty now. Even Bennis Hannaford went most weeks, in spite of the fact that she’d been brought up Protestant Episcopal and not in the Armenian church. Only Gregor stayed away consistently. He wasn’t sure why. He had nothing against religion. He had nothing against hearing Tibor preach and listening to the choir sing the kyrie eleison. He even believed in God on and off, depending on how his life was running. When it went badly, he tended to think there was an almighty out there, determined to get him. No, no. It was none of the usual things. It was just that church somehow didn’t seem—right—to him.
The seats are hard, Gregor told himself now. They hurt to sit in for even a little while, and the liturgy goes on for hours and hours, and before it’s half over you want a club chair and a great big mug of old George Tekemanian’s hot buttered rum.
It was ten minutes to seven on the morning of Saturday, February 2, and Gregor was in no danger of being asked to go to church. He had just come out the door and down the stoop steps of the brownstone where he had his apartment—and where old George Tekemanian, Bennis Hannaford, and Donna Moradanyan had theirs. He began walking up the street toward the Ararat. He stopped every once in a while to check out the decorations Donna Moradanyan had put up for Valentine’s Day. If he hadn’t known that Donna went to church regularly, he might have suggested she go. As it was, he thought he ought to suggest something. Donna was definitely off her feed. These decorations—the big silver-and-red heart on their front door; the red and white metallic streamers wrapped around every lamppost; the crepe paper cupid with his crepe paper bow and arrow on the façade of Lida Arkmanian’s place between the first and second floors—these decorations were nice, but they lacked Donna’s usual obsessiveness. It was as if she just hadn’t been able to work up any enthusiasm for hearts and flowers this year. Always before, Donna had loved Valentine’s Day.
Gregor got to the Ararat, tugged at its plate glass front door, and found it locked. Linda Melajian looked up from where she was folding napkins at a table in the center of the room and nodded. Linda Melajian was what the old people on Cavanaugh Street called a success story. She had gone away to an Ivy League college in New England and gotten a wonderful education—but then she’d come back again. Now she helped run the family business and taught English to new immigrants two nights a week in the basement of Holy Trinity Church.
“Sorry,” she said as she turned her keys in the lock and got the door open. “I’m running late this morning. Don’t ever tell my mother you caught me still folding napkins at seven o’clock. Or nearly seven o’clock. What time is it? Hannah Krekorian woke me up at quarter to six, if you can believe it, all hot to place an emergency catering order for a party she wants to give next Friday night. I’d keep an eye out for her today if you don’t want to go. I think she’s going to ask the whole street.”